


Together We're Winners

by Asukachan07



Series: WestAllen AUs [8]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Barry is the Chemist, Eddie Thawne deserved better, Multi, Oops, POV Multiple, Watch that E-rating, West-Allen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-10 03:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21460102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07
Summary: Criminals!AU, anyone?
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West
Series: WestAllen AUs [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1471967
Comments: 20
Kudos: 79





	Together We're Winners

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of me after I listened to Fire on Fire by Sam Smith on repeat. Please check it out and tell me that I'm not a psychopath for turning a love song into a fiction where good cops (a.k.a Eddie) get shot.  
Warning for violence throughout the entire story and a short sex scene at the beginning of the last part.
> 
> All mistakes are my own, feel free to point them out and I'll fix them!

Detective Eddie Thawne stared through the one way window of the interrogation room, not believing his luck.

He’d arrested the Chemist, one of the most wanted criminals in Central City. The guy was an elusive thief who stole the most valuable items that ever made their way through the city: art pieces donated to museums, exclusive luxury brand items, diamonds kept in bank vaults, you name it. The anonymous criminal was so good that it sometimes took up to several days before the concerned parties realized that they had been robbed.

“Are we sure that this guy is the Chemist?” Captain Singh asked on Eddie’s left, frowning at the handcuffed suspect sitting in the cold, sterile room across the glass. “He looks…”

Younger than expected, yeah. Eddie was quite outraged realizing that the whole police force had been playing tag with a guy who looked like he should still be in college. The arrested suspect hadn’t spoken a word in the hour he’d been detained, which would normally make it hard to confirm that this very well equipped burglar caught outside of _ The Spark _ was indeed the infamous Chemist.

But Thawne knew that this was the guy: he’d been given an anonymous tip about a heist at the new luxury store on Infantino Street. It was probably someone in the Chemist’s team who had betrayed him—the thief had to have a whole team, there was no way that a single man could execute such perfect crimes every single time—but Eddie hadn’t even bothered to ask for their identity to assess the validity of the intel. It had been highly improbable for the call to be a prank since very few people in Central City even knew that the Chemist existed.

“Captain, Detective, we got a match for his fingerprints!” Spivot announced cheerfully as she entered the room without knocking, as usual.

Neither cop reprimanded the CSI for barging in, instead they eagerly bent over her laptop to take a look at the suspect’s profile.

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, Born March 14 1989,” Eddie read out loud. “Huh, he looks younger than that…Parents died in a car accident, went from one foster family to the next, around which time he went to juvie. That’s how we have him in the database. Other than that, he’s an ordinary biotech researcher at Ramon Industries…What the! He’s _married_?”

“To an Iris Ann West-Allen, whose profile isn’t in the criminal database,” Patty informed him as she pulled the woman’s profile from a tab opened on the HS database. “She owns a coffee shop, Jitters… _ Jitters _! I’ve been there once, it’s a tiny little coffee shop that only sells americanos, lattes and brownies. She makes everything herself from scratch, opens the shop super early. The poor woman probably doesn’t know that her husband is a criminal!”

“I’ll get a warrant and you’ll go pick up Mrs. West-Allen,” Captain Singh instructed Eddie.

* * *

Iris West-Allen was one of the most beautiful women Eddie had ever met, and during the whole ride back to CCPD the cop felt bad for her. The young woman had first been in denial over the charges against her husband, then had teared up when Eddie listed the items that the Chemist had stolen over the years. With shaking hands, she had removed her engagement ring and returned _The Iris_, a pure purple diamond that the Chemist had stolen right before it was sold at an auction in Central City five years ago—Eddie had to give credit to the thief for finding the perfect diamond for his then fiancée. 

Apparently Allen had lied to his wife that the ring was a family heirloom, and for a moment Eddie found it hard to believe that the baker hadn’t heard about the diamond on the news at the time she got engaged.

“The case on the theft of _The Iris_ was eclipsed by news about the death of Keith Kenyon,” Singh informed Thawne—who was still living in Keystone back then—as he eyed the miserable woman from across the waiting room. “Kenyon operated mostly in the district where Jitters is located, so Mrs. Allen likely paid a lot more attention to that than anything else.”

“Did we ever figure out who killed that scumbag?” Eddie asked as he saw Iris stand up and look around before talking to the receptionist—probably asking for the restroom to clean her face, her mascara was running.

“At the time, a PI of mine claimed that Nessir Twain was the one who pulled the trigger,” the Captain let him know with a shrug.

Nessir Twain was another of the most wanted criminals in Central City, if not _ the _ most wanted criminal.

Twain was a gun collectionner. The guy was rumored to own every worthy firearm ever manufactured, their worth further increased by the fact that they didn’t exist on the black market of Central City because of him. Many arm traffickers had been forced out of business because their merchandise had been stolen or destroyed by Twain, who signed his name on all of his crime scenes.

This was why few cops believed in Twain being responsible for the death of Keith Kenyon, a.k.a Goldface: the arms collector hadn’t been linked to any other death. While Twain had shot many thugs who had tried to resist his thefts or oppose him, the injuries he afflicted were always on parts of the body that wouldn’t cause major bleeding, like hands and feet. Local gang members had come up with the expression ‘to pull a Twain’ which meant to shoot someone in a non-lethal way.

Since transferring to Central City, Eddie had dreamed of distinguishing himself by arresting either Nessir Twain or the Chemist. The universe had just granted him his wish.

“D.A. Lance is on her way,” the Captain told Thawne before walking back towards his office. “You better get a confession out of Allen before he lawyers up. We know that he can afford a good one.”

“On it, sir,” Eddie acknowledged as he returned to the interrogation room.

Allen had actually dozed off, and startled awake when the detective slammed the door shut.

The criminal tried to rub his eyes but was sharply reminded that his cuffed hands were tied to the table.

“Come on, Chemist, talk to me,” the cop requested as he took a seat on the chair opposite to the prisoner. “Don’t pretend that you’re not wondering how I found out about your robbery so soon, Barry Allen.”

The thief merely blinked at him before yawning.

“You know, I expected you to be older, bigger, and definitely _smarter_,” Eddie taunted him. “I mean, what idiot would use a stolen diamond for the engagement ring he'd later make his wife keep?”

That got him a reaction: Allen’s eyes widened in surprise then narrowed in anger.

“If you _ touch _ Iris,” the thief threatened, his voice deeper and more menacing than could be expected from the juvenile-looking man.

“I only collected _ The _ Iris,” the detective reassured him. “Your wife is safe and well—”

Eddie jumped off his chair as a loud explosion cut him off, half a second before the ground shook under him. The building fire alarm then blared through the speakers.

“What the hell?” the cop exclaimed as he walked to the door to check on what was happening.

He was about to reach for the door handle when someone opened the door from the outside, and the next thing he knew Detective Thawne had a gun pointed between his eyes.

“Comply silently and I won’t put a hole in your hand or foot,” Mrs. West-Allen told him casually, her index finger on the trigger of a modified Ruger LC9S.

_ What the fuck? _ was the first thought that came to the cop.

* * *

Barry admired the scene unfolding in front of him as he finally started working on the handcuffs. He could barely take his eyes off of Iris to look around the room and assess his whereabouts. She was so damn sexy, threatening the cop with that tiny gun he knew she’d concealed in a holster wrapped around one of her smooth thighs.

This was why the Chemist and Nessir Twain never worked together on the same missions: Barry couldn’t keep his mind out of the gutter whenever Iris was in criminal mode. She exuded so much sex-appeal that most times she didn’t even need her prized firearms to take down her opponents when they realized who she was. They either gladly complied in the hope of getting a piece of her, or surrendered to her dominating personality right away. 

“Mrs. Allen, you don’t have to do this,” Thawne said even as he lifted up his hands on either side of his head. “Not only would helping your husband escape brand you as a fugitive, but threatening a police officer at gunpoint is a federal of—”

Barry winced when the cop yelped in pain after Iris shot right through one of his palms. The detective lowered himself to the floor, whining miserably as he held onto his wounded flesh.

“It’s Mrs. _ West-Allen _, Detective Pretty Boy,” the gun collectionner corrected him calmly as she leaned away from the door and looked left and right before locking gaze with Barry. “Hurry babe, the fire isn’t going to keep them distracted forever.”

“Shooting a police officer, that’s at least ten years of jail,” Barry reminded her with a _ tsk _ before stepping around the grunting detective and pulling his wife to him, giving her a brief but dirty kiss as he slipped his hands under her skirt.

_Fuck_, he really wanted to fool around, at least check if she was as aroused as him. Iris always looked so innocent and poised, it was hard to believe that she was the most wanted person in Central City.

They _both_ had earned their reputation by being meticulous, so the thief put himself together and withdrew his hands as soon as his fingers made contact with the essential elements of his tool belt, which she had retrieved from the evidence room and tucked inside her nylon stockings.

“T minus ninety seconds,” he announced as he turned towards the back wall of the interrogation room.

As he uncapped a vial of concrete dissolver, the Chemist vaguely registered Twain ordering the injured cop to sit on a chair; he heard her cuff Thawne then step outside the room to confront the incoming officers.

Just as Iris returned, Barry had made a sizable hole in the wall.

“It was the fake engagement ring that you gave away, right?” he asked as he helped her climb over to the other side of the wall.

“Yeah, I packed the real one with the rest of the luggage we shipped to Aruba,” she informed him from the other side of the wall as she inspected the new room. 

It was just a filing room, the dust over all the surfaces indicating that it was rarely used. Barry quickly dissolved the wall on the other side of the first hole to create a final passage to the outside. Iris exchanged a few gunshots with more police officers, the sharp screams testimonies of her impeccable marksmanship.

Once outside, the couple didn’t dare turn around the corner to face even more cops and firefighters.

Instead, they waited for Laurel Lance to drive through and throw them a pair of uniforms, bulletproof vests, earpieces and two of Iris’ favorite guns before continuing to the parking lot.

They didn’t need to use the guns in the end, their escape undetected by the people milling around the precinct in the chaos they had created.

“Guys, I got proof that Harrison is an imposter,” Cisco told them when they connected their coms once they were a couple miles away, driving a patrol car.

“No need for proof, he sold me out to the cops,” Barry replied before switching on the sirens to get through the horrible traffic.

“Where are you guys going?” Caitlin questioned in their earpieces with slight alarm. "Are you headed to the airport without us?"

“We’re just going on a trip for our fifth anniversary while you guys find us a new home,” Iris reassured her, Cisco, and whoever else was online.

“So what are we going to do about the fake Wells?” Cisco questioned. “We can’t leave Central City without tying up loose ends.”

“I got caught because I wasted time _ taking care of him _,” the thief let him know. 

Harrison, or whoever his real name was, had taught Barry almost everything he knew. That’s how the younger man had been able to tail his mentor and find out that he was in league with many big shots from the black market who wanted to get rid of Nessir Twain.

Wells had initially been opposed to Iris joining their team, which Barry had understood at first because his girlfriend clearly had negative effects on his performance. But he’d thought that Harrison had come to terms with the fact that Iris was _ family _, just like Laurel had become part of the family through Cisco.

“Right,” Cisco acknowledged, his tone unreadable.

The hacker had been Wells’ first recruit, and had been more a son to the team founder than Barry. The thief wished that he could’ve let his best friend handle Harrison himself, but time had been of the essence.

“Have fun guys,” Caitlin said cheerfully. “I highly recommend Ibiza if it’s on your way. Ronnie and I went there for our second anniversary and it was heavenly.”

“No way, _Monaco_ is where it’s at,” Hartley chimed in. “That’s where I met Sydney, and even before that I had a blast.”

“No one trusts _ your _ idea of a blast, sound tech,” Cisco countered.

Barry chuckled, thoroughly entertained by the subsequent banter between his two friends.

For a few years, the thief had been content with the life he had with Team Flash, but reuniting with Iris West, his high school crush and first love, had made Barry realized that he wanted more than just the thrill of a challenging heist and the lavish life he could afford with his criminal activity.

The day the burglar had discovered that Nessir Twain was not only a woman but _ the _woman of his dreams had been the happiest of his life. Five years later, Barry still felt lucky that he hadn’t needed to lead a double life to have Iris be part of his world.

* * *

“Come on, babe, _ faster_,” Iris tried to coax her husband, to no avail.

He actually slowed down even more, making her feel each and every one of his strokes inside her with mind-blowing precision.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Barry whispered huskily in her ear after silencing her mewls with feather kisses on her lips.

It was most definitely _ not _ okay. With one of his large hands holding both of hers over her head, the other one leaving goosebumps all over her skin as he caressed every inch of her body that he could reach, Barry had Iris at his total mercy.

He was clearly not in a merciful mood right now. Usually, Iris’ husband was eager to make her reach Nirvana multiple times in one night, but _ one: _ it was the middle of the afternoon; and _ two: _ Barry enjoyed driving her _ insane _ with delayed orgasms once in a while.

Iris should’ve known. It _ had been _ a while since her life partner had attempted to literally kill her with his sexual prowess. She would die from lack of oxygen if he didn’t remind her to breathe now and then when he decided to take her apart ever so slowly. How Barry himself remained composed, his breathing barely above baseline as he pleasured her, used to be a mystery to Iris when he had first pulled that stunt. Back when they first started dating and to this day, Barry usually couldn’t keep his cool around her.

When he’d admitted to being the Chemist, the gun collector had understood: he was channeling the same calm he used when he was robbing the most secure vaults in Central City. As self-assured as Iris always appeared, she couldn’t control her heart rate and oxygen intake the way her husband could.

“Barry, Barry!” she couldn’t help but moan his name when he used the thumb of his free hand to sweep over her bundle of nerves just as he _ finally _ increased his pace.

“Iris,” he murmured to the skin of her sweaty neck, and a second later her back arched off the kitchen island, the pitch of her scream so high that it came out silent as she climaxed.

Iris wrapped her arms around Barry’s back as soon as he let go of her hands to grip her hips and chase his own pleasure.

It didn’t take long at all for him to come, which was a blessing because she got too sensitive after one of those slow burned orgasms.

“Sorry,” her husband apologized as he peppered kisses across her collarbones and shoulder before getting his weight off of her, sagging against the granite countertop by her side as he kept a hand rubbing her outer thigh soothingly.

It took Iris a moment to understand what he was apologizing for. She sighed in annoyance just as her nose picked up the smell of charred tomatoes.

“No Grandma Esther noodle dish for you for the next month,” she announced his punishment as she gingerly slid off the kitchen island to switch off the burner and grab paper towels to wipe herself.

Thankfully the sauce hadn’t burned enough to trigger the fire alarm. How embarrassing would it be for them to have the firefighters come over on their first week in their new place!

“Cisco’s bringing his tia’s sancocho,” Barry reminded her as he straightened up, functional enough to start cleaning around the area they had just christened. “There’s usually enough for seconds, so there should be enough food for everyone. Hartley also probably ordered from a caterer.”

“I’m only interested in Caitlin’s chocolate cake,” Iris admitted as she quickly dropped the deep pan in the sink and filled it up halfway with water.

“My brownies won’t be enough?” her husband asked in mock offense before dropping a resounding kiss on her cheek, making her eye the oven timer.

Five minutes until her favorite dessert was ready.

“Like you didn’t make two batches on purpose,” she replied as she hip checked him, then bent over to pick up her dress and underwear. “I’ll need to eat an entire pan to recuperate the calories you worked out of me, you animal. I want a cup of coffee at just the right temperature to go with my brownies when I get back from my shower!”

“Aww, I wanted us to take a bath! We haven’t used that bathtub to its full potential yet.”

“Not today, Bartholomew!” she denied his request with a laugh that he echoed.

Iris took a quick shower and dressed to look like a presentable host, unable to keep a stupid smile off her face the whole time.

She didn’t know what she’d done in another life to deserve the life she had now. Her deeds in the current one definitely hadn’t earned her the most loving husband in the world, nor all the money she made with the goofiest friends slash competent teammates she could ask for.

When her father had decided to move to Keystone to pursue his musical career even as he’d forbidden her to become a police officer, high school graduate Iris had felt lost. Joe West would’ve preferred for her to follow him, but her heart had belonged to Central City.

She hadn’t meant to become a gun collector. She had actually befriended a few anti-gun activists who had planned on sabotaging an arm dealing near the bank she had gone for a job interview.

The mission had gone south, and Iris had been forced to use her shooting skills— acquired in secret so her dad wouldn’t die of a heart-attack—to protect those friends.

She had used one of the unregistered guns dropped by one of the thugs to fight, and had kept it since she hadn’t had the time to wipe off her fingerprints before the police showed up.

After a few more sabotaging missions, Iris had parted ways from her activist friends, selling a few of the pilfered guns she’d kept to rent a decent apartment and save enough money to open her own business. The bakery had cost her more than she’d expected and vandalism was a big con of her location, so she’d created her Nessir Twain identity to keep her corner of Central City safe and to profit from more stolen guns. It unfortunately hadn’t been enough to pay her bills and keep Jitters running smoothly once she’d opened it.

She’d met Barry Allen for the first time since high school at the Central Bank one day when she’d tried to get a loan. She’d found his unchanged awkwardness adorable, and had been quite surprised when he’d immediately offered to give her money for her bakery after she’d admitted to having financial problems. He’d done well for himself, apparently getting paid much more than Iris expected from a research lab position at S.T.A.R. Labs, run by the famous Harrison Wells.

At first Iris had felt terrible for accepting Barry’s generosity, and she hadn’t felt any better when they’d started dating: it felt as if she was selling her body in exchange for his money. Her conscience had almost rebelled when she’d increased her criminal activity to be able to pay him back. Who’d risk their lives in order not to owe a favor from their sweet boyfriend? Iris Ann West, that’s who.

The table had turned when she had to save Barry’s life by killing Goldface. Iris had been forced to shoot Keith Kenyon in a vital spot, as the huge man had still been able to pummel her boyfriend with bloody fists even after she shot him in the hands. Goldface hadn’t die right away, it had taken him days to succumb to his wounds, and entire months had passed before the authorities got the confirmation that the most dangerous crime boss of Central City had mysteriously passed.

Similarly, it had taken a while for Barry to tell Iris why the high profile criminal had targeted him in the first place: he’d stolen an art piece that Kenyon had won at an auction. Even then he didn’t confess to being the Chemist, something she figured out herself shortly after when he proposed with an engagement ring that had the recently stolen _ The Iris _mounted on it.

The gun collector had immediately volunteered her own secret, which had made Barry feel extremely relieved.

From then onward, Iris’ life had _ almost _ been a smooth ride. Almost, because Harrison Wells, Barry’s official boss and secret mentor and leader, _ hated _ her.

Iris would’ve taken to the grave the fact that Barry’s father figure had tried to kill her multiple times back when they were still dating. She’d thought that the older man had finally accepted her when he’d attended their wedding, so she had decided to forgive and forget his violent but subtle attempts to take her out of his protégé’s life—sabotaging her car, locking her up in a room at S.T.A.R. labs and shutting down the ventilation system, switching off her com so she didn’t have back up during dangerous missions. 

Joe himself had been obvious in his disapproval of Barry as Iris’ partner until her wedding day, though in a much more non-lethal way, so the young woman had felt that it wasn’t worth driving a wedge between Barry and the man who had helped him become the husband she loved with all her heart and soul.

Little did Iris know that Wells, who ended up being a man who’d stolen the respected scientist’s identity, had kept trying to get her killed, just that this time his attempts had been limited to the streets through Nessir Twain’s enemies.

She’d had no proof, but thankfully Cisco had been the one to bring up his suspicions to the team that their mentor was a fraud. Barry and Caitlin had almost shunned him for it, and Iris had received the silent treatment from her husband for a couple of days for siding up with the hacker—she’d expected their reconciliation to take longer than that, but Barry had begged her to come home after two nights.

From there, Barry had worked with Iris to take down the Harrison Wells, or whoever his real name had been. It had taken a toll on him, which was why they had gone on a trip after blowing their covers in Central City.

Iris didn’t think that her husband had it in him to kill anyone. He'd told her that his confrontation with Harrison had been brutal but swift, and frankly the gun collector had no evidence that Wells’ death wasn’t an accident. Even if Barry had intended for his mentor to fall from that roof when he’d kicked him, the fact that he’d then tried to catch Harrison before he went over the railing showed that the thief wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer.

Now the whole team had settled in Star City, Laurel’s hometown and the city where Hartley’s long-time boyfriend Sydney lived with a team of vigilantes.

Oliver Queen and Team Arrow left Team Flash alone for the most part, probably because he sometimes enlisted their help to catch dangerous criminals, _ for free _.

Tonight Barry and Iris were hosting both teams, so a lot of food and alcohol was needed. Team Arrow was in charge of the booze and entertainment, Team Flash of the food.

Members from both teams had bet that their little party would be interrupted by Team Arrow’s duties. Iris hoped that she’d win: she’d bet that a crazy thug from Gotham would be the cause of troubles.

“Your coffee is getting cold. Can I help with your hair?” Barry asked sweetly as he exited the bathroom just as Iris was done applying makeup.

He was already dressed in a clean pair of jeans, but Iris smiled at the fact that he was naked from the waist up. He knew how much she loved his abs.

Not as much as he loved her neck, though to this day Barry denied having an obsession for it. Having him do her hair would be a monumental mistake, as it more often than not led to them having sex and her needing to improvise a new hairstyle.

“No, you stay on your side of the room, Mr. Allen,” she ordered him.

She glared at his pouting face across the mirror of her vanity, and he rolled his eyes before stepping to their huge walk-in closet to find a shirt.

“See if I remind you to wear your scarf tonight, Mrs. West-Allen,” he replied petulantly over his shoulder, and she stuck her tongue out at him in response. She wasn't ashamed to act as childishly as him in the privacy of their home.

To think that the two of them were among the most wanted criminals in the country. Only Detective Eddie Thawne would believe it.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that I made Barry and Iris likable enough. I kinda wanted to make them slightly sociopathic for a change, which I think only came through in Eddie's second POV and Barry's POV.  
Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
